Is Marriage in Crisis?

By WSJ Staff

Join in the next Ideas Market series for a discussion on the subject “Is Marriage in Crisis?”

Panelists include:

Ralph Richard Banks, author of Is Marriage for White People? and the Review essay “An Interracial Fix for Black Marriage”. He is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School.

Kate Bolick, author of “What, Me Marry?” an Atlantic cover story on being unmarried and approaching 40.

Kay Hymowitz, author of Manning Up: How the Rise of Women is Turning Men into Boys and author of the Review cover essay “Where Have the Good Men Gone?“ She is the William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. She writes extensively on childhood, family issues, poverty, and cultural change in America.

Susan Gregory Thomas, author of In Spite of Everything: A Memoir and a Review cover essay “The Divorce Generation.” Susan is a journalist and author of Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds.

The event will be held at The Sofitel in New York tomorrow evening, at 6, at 45 West 44th Street. It will be moderated by Gary Rosen, Editor of The Wall Street Journal weekend Review.

Comments (2 of 2)

It strikes me that a sub-theme of this discussion, given the previous writings of some of the panelists, is the crisis in young men, and more specifically their perceived and widely celebrated (or bemoaned) incompetence and irrelevance, their inadequacies, and utter unsuitability for marriage.
I would like to ask the panelists to comment on the various ways in which what I call "The New Asymmetry of Social Dialogue" may in fact be contributing to the very phenomenon which they have gathered to bemoan. Men, and especially young men, are a diminished lot these days, and their diminution, while gratifying to older and intransigently angrier (and very vocal) feminists, is presenting a problem for younger women. The younger generation of women still believe that they might enjoy a life shared with a man, a possibility written off as oxymoronic by the more polemic and vocal older feminists. To the latter, men as a group are irretrievably unworthy, and inferior. Some of the writing of more polarized women, in fact, seems directed at recruiting younger women as foot-soldiers and fellow-travelers in their life's journey of resentment.
Young men, in turn, are surrounded by a powerfully diminishing societal message, and are living down to it with appalling efficiency. It was a central realization of the Womens' movement in the 50's and 60's, that a diminishing societal message was powerfully disabling young women, and that society was very poorly served by the creation of a diminished under-class, whether it be based upon gender or race. The great, courageous and long-overdue message of equality and empowerment for women seems now to have segued, in the voices of the more polemic of feminists, into a dialogue of diminution of men and celebration of superiority of women.(See for example, Hannah Rossin's Atlantic cover article triumphally declaring "The End Of Men", preceding Ms. Bolick's article by 2 summers). I would like to ask the panelists to reflect and comment on this, and to ask whether there might be substantial trans-generational differences and cross-purposes among women looking at the crisis in marriage ( and implicitly in young men's adequacy and suitability). And to ask whether not only society, but younger generations of women, might be much better served by a dialogue which reverts to the mutually empowering. (Excellence, love, and marriage need not be an either-or phenomena.) And whether many more men, and some vocal women as devoted to parenthood as to the sisterhood might become involved in a public way in this dialogue. Thank You

8:04 am February 7, 2012

Anna wrote :

Please comment about the constant pressures from advertising and the internet that entice us to seek out younger, more attractive and sexier partners. What factor does internet porn play in patterning our views of sexuality and how does this alter expectations of sexuality in marriage? Does this stress women in marriage?

These forces are very strong, and do not seem to be balanced, in any format (paper, TV or internet) to encourage honesty, reality, and commitment in a relationship. Everyday we hear about divorce, but hardly ever about a long term relationship that had endured and should be celebrated.